CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LOVE REKINDLED.
Cora had been listening outside the door, and she darted in now, exclaiming:
“I was just coming in when I heard you call for me, dear aunt.”
She gazed at Carey Doyle as if he had been a perfect stranger, but her face was ghastly with fear lest he meant also to betray her secret.
But he flashed her a swift, reassuring look while Mrs. Dalrymple exclaimed:
“Only think, Cora, this man has news of Darling. Kindly repeat it to her, sir.”
And Carey Doyle, who remembered well the rivalry between Cora and Jessie, took a malicious pleasure in doing so, gloating over each word as he saw how ghastly pale and frightened she grew.
Mrs. Dalrymple was watching her niece, too, and very suddenly she said:
“While he was telling me this story, Cora, I remembered that on that same night a servant called you out of my room, saying a young lady wanted me, and that you must come down. You went, and when you returned, after a while, you said nothing of the visitor, and in my agitation I forgot it till just now. Cora, Cora, can it be possible”—she broke off short, for Cora fell at her feet in wildest agitation.
“Oh, Aunt Verna, can you ever forgive me for what I have done? Indeed, I meant it for the best, but it has turned out to be a terrible mistake!”
“Cora, Cora, what have you done?”
“Forgive me, forgive me; I did wrong.”
“Do not keep me in suspense, Cora. Answer me, was it my daughter that came that night?”
“It was a girl that looked like the one you interred in the old family vault. She said: ‘I am Jessie Lyndon, the stolen daughter of Mrs. Dalrymple. I wish to see her if you please!’”
“My God! And you sent her away?” groaned the agonized mother.
“Yes, I sent her away, for how could I dream that she was speaking the truth?”
“Cora, you should have brought her to me!” wildly.
“I feared it would kill you in your weak state, for every one thought you were sinking into death. It seemed to me I was acting very prudently, and when she was gone I kept the secret, believing it was for the best.”
Cora’s acting was superb. Her dark eyes were full of burning tears, and her whole behavior showed grief and regret.
Mrs. Dalrymple was completely deceived. She almost pitied Cora.
“Get up, dear girl, do not weep so bitterly. I will forgive you, for I know you did what you thought was for the best, though you made a sad and grievous mistake.”
She turned her eyes on Carey Doyle as if she had momentarily forgotten his presence, and exclaimed:
“Why, have you not seen the chauffeur who brought her here?”
“I did not neglect that, madam, but he said she paid her fare and dismissed him, saying she should remain with her friends all night.”
“Oh, heavens, what a mystery! Where did my Darling go, alone, penniless, friendless, that gloomy night?” sobbed the mother.
Carey Doyle watched Cora with a lynx eye, but her perfectly acted remorse and grief baffled suspicion.
He rose, and Mrs. Dalrymple said eagerly:
“Keep up the search for my daughter and you shall be paid well for your work.”
“I will do what I can, madam, and I hope you will hear from me again,” he replied respectfully; then with a malignant look at Cora, he withdrew from the room and was shown out by a servant.
Cora had a difficult rôle to play now, pretending the keenest regret for her cousin’s disappearance, while at heart she was wildly elated over it.
But she was not finding much happiness in her position as bride elect, though she knew that half the girls in New York would envy her the honor of becoming the handsome young millionaire’s bride.
They did not know how she had schemed and sinned for that honor, nor that the sweets of victory had turned to dead sea fruit upon her lips.
His short-lived passion was dead, and in spite of his honorable efforts to disguise his indifference, Cora realized his patient misery, and knew that the day of their wedding was secretly unwelcome to his heart.
A nobler woman would have given him his freedom unasked, too proud to accept the hand without the heart.
Not so Cora, who recklessly ran every risk for the sake of gratifying her love and ambition, hurrying on the wedding day in spite of her aunt’s lingering illness and painful anxiety, and despite the fact that she knew that secretly Frank resented the unseemly haste.
Indeed, she had overheard him lamenting it to Mrs. Dalrymple, saying:
“I fear it looks selfish to you, our marrying and going off in such haste, leaving you in this trouble.”
“Do not think of me. Cora is the only one to be considered now. She feels that she has waited too long for her happiness to have it postponed longer,” she answered.
He noticed that she made no reference to his own case, and flushed slightly, dreading lest she had penetrated the secret of his love for her missing daughter, and meant to rebuke him for fickleness to Cora.
He said no more, for Cora entered just then with a downcast face, having managed to overhear their brief conversation. They were going for a drive, and presently Mrs. Dalrymple was left alone with her thoughts.
They were not pleasant ones, for they veered with painful persistence between the missing daughter and the dead father.
In the dear, dead past she had loved him well, and the old love seemed to wake again, now that he was dead and beyond her tenderness.
She leaned her beautiful, dark head on her wasted, white hand where the blue veins showed so clearly, and burning tears flowed down her cheeks.
Suzanne entered with the afternoon mail on a salver, placed it on a stand before her mistress, and gently retired.
Dashing away the unwelcome tears, she began going over the letters, mostly affectionate missives from her “dear Four Hundred friends,” expressing affectionate pleasure at her rumored great improvement in health.
Dropping them wearily one after the other, she came upon one addressed in so large a masculine hand that she stared at it in some curiosity.
Then she saw that it was not addressed to herself, but to Miss Darling Dalrymple, and was postmarked New York.
“How very, very strange this is, and how familiar the handwriting looks!” she cried with a quickened heartthrob, and she decided that in this case it was her duty to open her daughter’s letter.
She did so with nervous, fluttering fingers, and then she saw staring her in the face these words:
“My Darling Daughter: If I had not thought I was destined to perish in the cruel sea that day, I should never have given you the clew to find your proud mother who wrecked my life with her relentless scorn.
“If I had not been sure of death, I never should have intrusted you with those messages of remorse and forgiveness and love at which she laughed, perhaps, in her undying resentment against me. I could hope now that you forgot to tell her, for it might be better so.
“You are with your mother, no doubt, so I address this letter to her house. Oh, Jessie, darling, how I blundered when I gave you back to her! My heart cries out for you, my darling child, the only treasure I have in the world! I cannot give you up. Will you come back to me, darling? She has troops of friends, and does not need you, but I have only my dark-eyed Jessie.
“If she laughed and mocked at the tender messages I sent her when I believed I must die, never tell me of it, darling. I cannot bear the pain.
“Choose between us, quickly, Jessie, and come to me at once, if you can, at the Hotel Supremacy.
“Leon Dalrymple.”
The great, hollow, dark eyes devoured every word with surprise and joy, for nothing he could say against her mattered much now that she knew he lived, the man she had loved hopelessly through years of alienation and separation with the terrible barrier of divorce between their wedded hearts.
And no matter how far they had drifted apart, their hearts must share one common sorrow—the loss of their darling.
She bowed her head upon the letter, and the wild, hysterical sobs of an overburdened heart shook her frame.